alum
IPA: ˈæɫʌm
noun
- An astringent salt, usually occurring in the form of pale crystals, much used in the dyeing and tanning trade and in certain medicines, and now understood to be a double sulphate of potassium and aluminium (K₂SO₄·Al₂(SO₄)₃·24H₂O).
- (chemistry) Any similar double sulphate in which either or both of the potassium and aluminium is wholly or partly replaced by other univalent or tervalent cations.
- (shortening, Canada, US) A past attendee or graduate (of either gender) of a college, university or other educational institution.
verb
- (transitive) To steep in, or otherwise impregnate with, a solution of alum; to treat with alum.
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Examples of "alum" in Sentences
- Tom, a Stanford alum, is no stranger to such awards.
- The most widely used coagulant is Aluminium sulphate, commonly known as alum; Iron salts
- The Lost alum is set to guest-star on How I Met Your Mother, a show rep tells TVGuide. com.
- Boiling the samples in alum made the blue color disappear, leaving behind only the yellow of the original green sample. 3
- The former Merck executive and Fordham University alum is giving $1 million to build a new football locker room on the university's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx.
- I have, I believe, at last succeeded in arranging the proper proportions, and in substituting, for the worse than useless crude alum, the alum ustum or burnt alum, which is not affected by moisture
- After a shortlived gig on the canned CW drama The Beautiful Life, the High School Musical alum is sliding back into his singing and dancing shoes to leap to “new heights” in the Tony-award winning musical.
- Another Lost alum is set to appear in the CSI franchise: Entertainment Weekly reports Harold Perrineau is set to appear in an April episode of CSI: NY, as a death row inmate who finds himself in the middle of a prison riot, just as he drops a bombshell on Hill Harper’s character.
- Probably the alumen referred to by Pliny, as exuding from the earth, was sulphate of alumina, without potash or soda, a salt not easily crystallized, but as effective, in many cases more effective, in the operations of dyeing, as alum, which is attested by the preference given to this salt over alum for many purposes at the present day.
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